Consumers are increasingly interested in compact, space-saving products, including space-saving wheeled vehicles such as the invention herein. Inventor Shapiro has been granted previous U.S. patents on a wide variety of “fold flat” wheeled products, most particularly relevant are a previous patent relating to tricycles and ride on vehicles, U.S. Pat. No. 7,100,929, a divisional patent of U.S. Pat. No. 6,607,207. This invention further refines fold-flat concepts on wheeled riding vehicles including tricycles, and discloses removable and stowable handles, and methods to fold the wheel assemblies into a storage compartment, among other disclosures relating to uniques methods to provide motive power and propulsion to the pivoting/stowable wheel assemblies.
The inventions here provide for standard or fold-flat and collapsible three or four wheeled devices, including children's tricycles as well as adult vehicles, and further applies pedal-power or motor/battery power to these wheeled vehicles. The wheeled vehicles may be standard non-folding vehicles adapting the removable and stowable handles, or may in certain circumstances include fold-flat vehicles as well.
One object of the invention is to provide for unique push or pull handles for wheeled vehicles, mainly to provide for selectively removable push handles that may be placed in an operative position to allow an adult to push/pull a children's embodiment of the tricycle vehicle, but allows the selective removal of the handle and the stowing of the handle within the hollow or shaped receiving portion of the central frame of the wheeled vehicle.
In an alternate embodiment, it is another object of the invention to provide that the same push handle may instead alternatively be stowed transversely along what is called the rear frame and rear compartment of the wheeled vehicle.
Another object of the invention is to provide for several alternative types of grasps for the handle, and to provide that the handles may be extensible and retractable using common methods applied in other areas of art.
Another object of the invention is to provide for unique storage compartments for wheeled vehicles, and to provide that the storage compartments may allow for storage of objects while the vehicle is in an operative position, but once the entire vehicle is to be stowed, the same compartment may also be occupied by one or more of the folding wheel axle assemblies of the device.
It is a further object of the invention to provide that a battery/fuel cell or motor may be mounted in the interior or exterior of the rear frame compartment and that the battery or motive power may be applied to one or more of the wheels mounted to the rear frame.